McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm founded almost a hundred years ago, does a lot of remarkable things, many of which you might already be aware of. What you might not know, however, is that they also do an annual book list, with reading recommendations from top business leaders, academicians, editors and McKinsey’s own leaders. Their annual book list for 2023, which you can access here, has been put together by McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti and includes books from various genres, including biographies and memoirs, business, history, innovation, politics, psychology, workplace culture and more. We thought the list, which includes recommendations from people who are heavy-hitters in their respective fields, is quite interesting. From that list, here are the eight books that we liked best.
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
‘Physicist and polymath, as familiar with Hindu scriptures as he was with quantum mechanics, J. Robert Oppenheimer – director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb – was the most famous scientist of his generation. In their meticulous and riveting biography, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin reveal a brilliant, ambitious, complex and flawed man, profoundly involved with some of the momentous events of the twentieth century. Oppenheimer led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘In this magisterial biography, twenty-five years in the making, the authors capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War,’ it adds.
Recommended by Homayoun Hatami, Senior partner and managing partner, global client capabilities, McKinsey
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 736 / 770
Price: Rs 546 / Rs 518
Available on Amazon
The Antisocial Network, by Ben Mezrich
‘This is definitive take on the wildest story of the year― the David-vs-Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight that may end up changing Wall Street forever. Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliated group of private investors and Internet trolls took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the financial establishment. It started on a subreddit forum called WallStreetBets – a meme-filled, freewheeling place where a disparate group of investors shared their shoot-the-moon investment tips, laughed about big losses, and posted diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in GameStop – a flailing bricks and mortar video-game retailer – and somehow rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight, simultaneously triggering unfathomable losses for one of the most respected funds on the street. in thrilling, pulse-pounding prose, The Antisocial Network offers a fascinating, never-before-seen glimpse at the outsize personalities, dizzying swings, corporate drama, and underestimated American heroes and heroines who captivated the world during one of the most volatile weeks in financial history. It’s the amazing story of what just happened―and where we go from here,’ says the publisher’s note.
Recommended by Brian Doubles, President and CEO, Synchrony
The Antisocial Network
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 288 / 301
Price: Rs 371 / Rs 352
Available on Amazon
Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind, by Andy Dunn
‘At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford’s MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startup—a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand—out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men’s pants. Against all odds, business was booming. Hustling to scale the fledgling venture, Dunn raised tens of millions of dollars while boundaries between work and life evaporated. As he struggled to keep the startup afloat, Dunn was haunted by a ghost: a diagnosis of bipolar disorder he received after a frightening manic episode in college, one that had punctured the idyllic veneer of his mid-western upbringing. He had understood his diagnosis as an unspeakable shame that—according to the taciturn codes of his fraternity, the business world, and even his family—should be locked away,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘As Dunn’s business began to take off, however, some of the very traits that powered his success as a founder—relentless drive, confidence bordering on hubris, and ambition verging on delusion—were now threatening to undo him. A collision course was set in motion, and it would culminate in a night of mayhem—one poised to unravel all that he had built. Burn Rate is an unconventional entrepreneurial memoir, a parable for the twenty-first-century economy, and a revelatory look at the prevalence of mental illness in the startup community. With intimate prose, Andy Dunn fearlessly shines a light on the dark side of success and challenges us all to take part in the deepening conversation around creativity, performance, and disorder,’ it adds.
Recommended by Ariela Safira, Founder and CEO, Real
Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind
Format: Hardcover / Kindle
Number of Pages: 304 / 322
Price: Rs 488 / Rs 419
Available on Amazon
Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life, by Bill Perkins
‘A common-sense guide to living rich instead of dying rich. Imagine if by the time you died, you did everything you were told to. You worked hard, saved your money, and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired. The only thing you wasted along the way was… your life. Die with Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life. It’s intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one’s so-called ‘golden years.’ In short, Bill Perkins wants to rescue you from over-saving and under-living,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘Regardless of your age, Die with Zero will teach you Perkins’s plan for optimizing your life, stage by stage, so you’re fully engaged and enjoying what you’ve worked and saved for. You’ll discover how to maximize your lifetime memorable moments with ‘time-bucketing,’ how to convert your earnings into priceless memories by following your ‘net worth curve,’ and how to navigate decisions about whether to invest in, or delay, a meaningful adventure with your ‘fulfillment curve’ and ‘personal interest rate.’ Using his own life experiences as well as the inspiring stories and cautionary tales of others—and drawing on eye-opening insights about time, money, and happiness from psychological science and behavioural finance—Perkins makes a timely, convincing, and contrarian case for living large,’ it adds.
Recommended by David Kramer, President, United Talent Agency
Die with Zero
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 240 / 242
Price: Rs 899 / Rs 251
Available on Amazon
The Age of AI, by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher
‘Three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society – and what it means for us all. An AI learned to win chess by making moves human grand masters had never conceived. Another AI discovered a new antibiotic by analysing molecular properties human scientists did not understand. Now, AI-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. AI is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality. In The Age of AI, three leading thinkers have come together to consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live. The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any that has come before,’ says the publisher’s note.
Recommended by Ginni Rometty, Former chair and CEO, IBM; cochair, OneTen and Joydeep Sengupta, Senior partner, McKinsey Singapore
The Age of AI
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 272 / 205
Price: Rs 448 / Rs 277
Available on Amazon
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma, by Mustafa Suleyman, with Michael Bhaskar
‘A stark and urgent warning on the unprecedented risks that a wave of fast-developing technologies poses to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance. We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks-operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘We are not prepared. As cofounder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution, one poised to become the single greatest accelerant of progress in history. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies. Driven by overwhelming strategic and commercial incentives, these tools will help address our global challenges and create vast wealth-but also upheaval on a once unimaginable scale. In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces threaten the grand bargain of the nation state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harm arising from unchecked openness on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other. Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia? In this groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider, Suleyman establishes the containment problem – the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies – as the essential challenge of our age,’ it adds.
Recommended by Reid Hoffman, Cofounder, LinkedIn; partner, Greylock
The Coming Wave
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 352 / 332
Price: Rs 640 / Rs 666
Available on Amazon
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
‘Throughout history, technological change – whether in the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today’s artificial intelligence – has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest. The reality, though, is that technology is shaped by what powerful people want and believe, generating riches, social respect, cultural prominence, and further political voice for those already powerful. For most of the rest of us, there is the illusion of progress. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson debunk modern techno-optimism through a dazzling, original account of how technological choices have changed the course of history. From vivid stories of how the economic surplus of the Middle Ages was appropriated by an ecclesiastical elite to build cathedrals while the peasants starved, to the making of vast fortunes from digital technologies today as millions are pushed towards poverty, we see how the path of technology is determined and who influences its trajectory,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘To achieve the true potential of innovation, we need to ensure technology is creating new jobs and opportunities rather than marginalizing most people, through automated work and political passivity. We need to use the tremendous digital advances of the last half century to create useful and empowering tools, rather than so-so technologies that replace workers but fail to improve productivity, seizing back control from a small elite of hubristic, messianic tech leaders pursuing their own interests. With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for building a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the understanding and vision to reimagine and reshape the path of technology and create true shared prosperity,’ it adds.
Recommended by Mark Suzman, CEO and board member, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Power and Progress
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 560 / 559
Price: Rs 671 / Rs 365
Available on Amazon
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, by Adam Grant
‘If you can change your mind you can do anything. Discover how rethinking can lead to excellence at work and wisdom in life. Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world it might matter more that we can rethink and unlearn. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds-and our own. As Wharton’s top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he tries to argue like he’s right but listen like he’s wrong. Think Again invites us to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom,’ says the publisher’s note. ‘Told through fascinating stories, informed by cutting-edge research and illustrated with amazing insights from Adam Grant’s conversations with people such as Elon Musk, Hilary Clinton’s campaign team, top CEOs and leading scientists, this is the ultimate guide to keeping your thinking fresh, learning when to question your ideas and update your own opinions, and how to inspire those around you to do the same,’ it adds.
Recommended by Mads Nipper, President and CEO, Ørsted
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What you Don’t Know
Format: Paperback / Kindle
Number of Pages: 320 / 297
Price: Rs 437 / Rs 218
Available on Amazon
Bonus: Here’s another three books from the McKinsey list that we like very much, but have already written about earlier here on BooksFirst
The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland
Recommended by Rebecca Blumenstein, President, NBC News Editorial
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, by Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann
Recommended by Kat Downs Mulder, Senior vice president and general manager, Yahoo News
Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination, by Mark Bergen
Recommended by Steve Grove, CEO and publisher, Star Tribune Media Company
See the full list – McKinsey’s 2023 Summer Reading Guide – here
BooksFirst 